


Growing Up Fast Is Hard To Do

by sittingoverheredreaming



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: F/F, Gen, Outer Senshi Family, Unhappy Outers Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-01-30 08:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sittingoverheredreaming/pseuds/sittingoverheredreaming
Summary: Family can be a wonderful thing-- but when the family is two teenagers, a newly human time deity, and the erratically aging soldier of destruction, there's bound to be pain alongside the joy.





	1. Chapter 1

Having Hotaru might have been the greatest thing to ever happen to Haruka, she mused as she bounced the baby around the room. The little girl smiled up at her. There were things that weren’t ideal—they were barely out of school, Setsuna was a strange and intimidating roommate and co-parent, evil was rising once again—but that smile was all Haruka needed. This was her chance to live out her dream with Michiru, and they otherwise might not be able to.

Hotaru’s eyes slowly closed and her weight sank more fully against Haruka’s chest. Haruka felt her heart grow warm.

“Michiru!” she called as loud as she could while still whispering. “Look, she’s falling asleep on me.”

Michiru leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. “It’s very sweet.” Her smile did not reach her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Haruka set Hotaru gently in the crib. She let herself be pulled into the hall and shut the door.

“My suggestion still stands.”

“What sug—the nanny thing? No! This is wonderful, Michi, I’m not gonna have some stranger meddling around with our kid.”

Michiru pressed her lips together. “She’s not our child. And even if she were… there are a myriad of reasons I’m as well-adjusted as I am, and most of them were on my parents’ payroll. I only think we should give Hotaru the same opportunities.”

“Are you saying you don’t think I can be a good enough parent?”

“No, Haruka.” She sighed heavily. “I’m just asking you to think about it.”

“And I have!” Haruka shouted, before remembering the baby was just a thin wall away. “I have,” she whispered. “I want this so bad, Michi. She’s our little baby. Our little bundle of joy.”

Michiru did a decent impression of a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy, love.”

But the uneasiness was there. It clouded in Haruka’s mind alongside her own fears. After everything, couldn’t she be happy? Couldn’t she be good? She deserved happiness—no, she deserved nothing. She forced a smile back at Michiru. She, at least deserved something good.

Maybe that was the problem. Haruka’s smile turned genuine as the thought entered her mind. Maybe Michiru didn’t think Haruka was a horrible parent, maybe she was jealous. They were finally really together, after all, and now Haruka was too focused on the baby.

“Why don’t we go out?”

Michiru gave a start. “Pardon?”

“We haven’t been on a date for a while, and what’s the point of three parents if we don’t take advantage for some romance?” Haruka felt a pang of something ugly at Setsuna being as much Hotaru’s parent as the two of them, but she fought it down. For Michiru. “I wanna give you a beautiful night.”

Michiru looked puzzled, but happier. “I suppose I’d like that. Shall I start making myself presentable?”

Haruka grabbed her around her middle. “You’re always presentable and beautiful and amazing.” She kissed along her ear, feeling immediately enchanted. Sometimes touching Michiru consumed her with the desire to worship her, to pull her closer and closer until they were so tangled up in each other they might be a single creature.

“Haruka!” Michiru giggled. “If you continue, I won’t let you take me anywhere but the—“

Her words were cut off from a shrill cry from Hotaru. Haruka jumped away. She’d forgotten, somehow, so quickly, about the baby.

“I’ll… I’ll, um, just see what she needs real quick. You can start getting ready. I’ll be quick.”

It was not quick. The diaper was messy, Hotaru was fussy, Haruka was guilty. She spent longer than was strictly necessary soothing Hotaru back to sleep, and then had to shower. There was no part of her that wanted to get a nanny, but as she scrubbed at her arms in the hot water, she did wonder briefly if she would be better off. That seemed so selfish—one postponed date, and she was looking to run the other way? No, that wasn’t Haruka. She was better than that. She was more than her own parents could be.  She would make this work.

She put on a clean pressed shirt and Michiru’s favorite tie and went down to the living room. Setsuna sat on the couch with a magazine. That seemed out of place to Haruka. She felt Setsuna was a person who ought to be sighted with big, impossible tomes of knowledge, not a flashy flimsy fashion rag.

“You look very nice,” Setsuna said as she turned a page. “I hope you have a lovely time.”

“Uh, thanks.” Haruka shuffled her feet against the carpet. “I hope you have a good night in.”

Setsuna gave a soft, knowing smile. “Thank you. I believe I shall.”

Haruka’s cheeks flushed hot with unbidden shame—they ought to be equals, but Setsuna always made her feel like a simple child.

“Are you ready, love?” Michiru appeared at the top of the stairs, and everything else faded to background noise. She wore a simple wrap dress, just enough shades of pink from white to bring out her eyes. Her hair curled at her bare shoulders. As always, she looked like an impossible dream.

Going out with her often felt the same way. It was a dream everyone had, Haruka was sure—to be on the arm of the most beautiful woman in any room, to have everyone looking at you and knowing that somehow, the most beautiful woman has picked you, is getting dinner with you, is making everyone in the restaurant jealous of you. Sometimes, it was too much, but that night, Haruka reveled in it. She made eye contact with one man as they sat down and puffed out her chest to show him he wouldn’t have even been in the running.

Dinner was nice, and Michiru’s attention was nicer. She held Haruka’s hand on the white tablecloth and narrowed the world to the two of them. It was an ability that amazed Haruka. She wondered sometimes if it was an offshoot of Neptune’s powers or pure Michiru. She barely even noticed the waiter, just that there was food and then there wasn’t and then Michiru was pulling out her purse to handle the check.

“I can help with the tip,” Haruka said, returning to herself. She should have paid more attention to the waiter, and she should have more to offer Michiru besides.

Michiru gave her a particular unreadable smile she saved for these moments. “Why don’t I put it on my card, and you can treat me back later?” She wrote down a large number Haruka knew meant both that she was being appeased and she would be unable to match the amount.

“I guess that’s alright.” Haruka leaned close. “Maybe I’ll treat you when we get home. Make this worth your while.”

“An evening with you is always worthwhile. But…” Michiru gave a tiny tug on Haruka’s tie. “I can think of a thing or two I might want.”

Surely Setsuna wouldn’t mind babysitting a little longer.

Haruka drove home as fast as she could without breaking too many laws. The lights in the living room were still on as she pulled in; she prepared to give Setsuna a good excuse as to why she should answer to any of Hotaru’s cries when they were all home. Bonding time, maybe. Haruka hogged little Hotaru, she knew, but that was because she loved her best. She could be so gracious as to give Setsuna a night.

“Hey, Sets.” She said with her key in the door. “How was your night?”

“Good thank you. I’m just reading Hotaru a story.”

“Oh good,” Haruka said as she kicked off her shoes. “How was—“

She froze. Her baby was not on the couch. A toddler, with black hair down to her chin and big knowing eyes, looked up from next to Setsuna.

Michiru placed her hand on Haruka’s shoulder. “Setsuna did say—“

“What did you do to her?”

Setsuna sighed and closed her storybook. “I told you this might happen. With whatever evil coming—“

“She’s a baby she shouldn’t—or she _was_ a baby! And—“

“It’s okay, Papa. I want to be this right now.”

Haruka gaped. Fear, mixed with awe that someone so small could speak so clearly, rammed against the joy of being called Papa for the very first time. “Oh… okay. I’m sorry, Hotaru.”

The toddler turned back in her seat on the couch and kicked out her legs. “Can we finish the story, Mama?”

“Of course.”

Haruka shrugged off Michiru’s comforting hand to go upstairs alone. This wasn’t what she’d imagined at all.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a small part of Setsuna that took joy in every little bit Hotaru aged. She had all the official knowledge the world had to offer about children, but Haruka could find that as well. The closer Hotaru got to the age Small Lady had been, the more Setsuna had the edge of experience. It shouldn’t be a contest, she knew, but Haruka distrusted her. Haruka would exclude her if she thought it possible. It was Pluto’s place in the universe, to stand alone and watch from afar. A child had changed that once before, and a child could change it again. It wasn’t that Setsuna wanted to be loved best, she just wanted to be loved.

Although perhaps being loved best wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Haruka had hogged the baby, so surely it was not wrong for Setsuna to draw the toddler’s attention to herself.

“Hotaru!” Haruka called once again from the patio doors. “Do you want to come play catch?” She threw the ball up with exaggerated gusto, practically falling back over herself to catch it.

“No thank you, Papa.”

Setsuna kept her smile to herself. This was their time together, and Hotaru wanted that. She wanted to learn the songs and stories of bygone eras. Only Setsuna could teach her that.

“Now, little one, in—“

“Setsuna-mama, where’s Michiru-mama?”

‘In her studio, I believe. Why do you ask?”

Hotaru jumped down from her seat, her hair and little dress fanning out behind her. “I want to see her!”

“Oh.” Michiru did not participate in the secret tug-of-war. “I don’t think she wants to be disturbed, Hotaru.”

“So I won’t disturb her.”

Setsuna followed with reluctance as Hotaru made her way through the house. To the little girl’s credit, she did not run. She walked with a seriousness beyond her years, as she did most things. Setsuna would place her around four, possibly, though she remained very small so it was hard to say for sure. Perhaps ascribing any age to Hotaru was pointless until her aging settled down and her mind and body aligned. She was a mystery. Setsuna tried not to think that as a mystery herself, that made her the best parent for Hotaru. She did not succeed.

The door to Michiru’s studio was open. She sat before a canvas, working with her finest brush on several tiny lines on one side.

“She’s busy, Hotaru,” Setsuna whispered. “We should leave her be.”

“Michiru-mama?” Hotaru padded over anyway. “I want to paint with you.”

Michiru withdrew her brush from the canvas. She smiled a smile that was genuine but, by Setsuna’s measure, lacking the glow of love. “Mama’s paints aren’t good for little hands.”

“Oh.” Hotaru hung her head.

“Hold on one moment.” Michiru walked around to one of her cabinets and picked through it. She turned back with a pad of paper, an old brush, and a handful of paint tubes. “I don’t use these very much, but you still have to be very careful with them, okay?”

Hotaru nodded. “I will, Mama.”

“If it gets on your hands, tell me and we’ll wash it off together.” Michiru smiled again. “Mama likes to paint quietly, is that okay?”

Another vigorous nod. “I will be quiet as a cat.”

Michiru chuckled. “Thank you, Hotaru. But do tell me if you need anything.” She sat back at her canvas, and Hotaru settled on the floor next to her and sorted through her paints.

Setsuna lingered at the door for a moment before taking her leave. There would be other days. This was merely one of many. She had not lost to the only person not competing.

\----

There was something comforting in having Hotaru working next to her. Michiru did her best not to get attached. She could see the writing on the wall; they could only play house for so long. And yet… it was hard, she assumed, to not feel affection for a child who lived in your home. She ought to ask her parents how they’d done it.

“Mama?” Hotaru’s little voice broke her reverie. “I have to use the bathroom.”

“You may go.”

Hoatru did not move. She stared up at Michiru with her big purple eyes full of question.

“Oh. Do you need… help?”

Hotaru nodded.

Michiru swallowed. This was out of her depth. She tried to figure out if any nanny she’d looked into could be there soon enough to save her. “Would you like me to call Haruka-papa or Setsuna-mama?”

Hotaru shook her head. “I gotta go _now_.”

“Okay.” Michiru set down her brush, nearly knocking over her paints and water. “Let’s go then.”

Hotaru hopped quickly from foot to foot down the hall, and continued to do so once she reached the toilet. “Hurry, Mama, hurry!”

“Okay.” Michiru put up the toilet lid. Hotaru still looked expectant. With a deep breath, Michiru helped her wriggle her skirt and underclothes to her ankles. Hotaru nodded encouragement. Michiru lifted her to the seat and tried to pretend she was anywhere else.

Senshi life bore many trials. She’d never felt less qualified than this.

Yet Hotaru seemed fine, even proud, when it was over and Michiru gave her a boost to wash her hands.

“Hey, Hotaru, I got bubbles form the corner store, do you…” Haruka zoomed into the door frame and stopped short. “Oh, hi Michiru.”

“I’m having a good day with Mama!” Hotaru said, beeming up at her papa. “Do you want to see what I made?”

Michiru knew Haruka well enough to see how she tried to keep her face stiff, but she still fell to looking like a lonely puppy. “Sure.”

Hotaru led the way back to the studio, marching proud. She picked up her unfinished painting with a flourish. It was a crude and unsteady work, but long deliberate lines of green made it an unmistakable portrait of Michiru. “I gotta finish it still,” Hotaru said in her most serious voice. “But it’s Michiru-mama!’

Haruka had been struck in battle countless times, but Michiru had never seen her so wounded. “It’s very good,” she offered. “You must love your Mama a lot. Maybe she’ll put it on her wall.”

Michiru knew what she had to do. “It’s alright.” She knelt and frowned. “You should work on finer lines for the hair, and the perspective is a bit of a mess.” She bit the inside of her cheek and looked Hotaru in the eyes. “It’s alright for a first try, but I expect better from you.”

“Oh.” Hotaru turned the paper around to look, and then let it drop to the floor. “Papa, you said you had bubbles?”

They walked out hand in hand. Michiru watched them leave. Once they were out of sight, she picked up Hotaru’s painting. It was lovely in its own way, pure and innocent and affectionate. She walked over to her cabinet and propped it up against the back, where it would be hidden from everyone but her—her secret memory to keep even after everything fell apart.


	3. Chapter 3

There had to be something wrong with her, Hotaru knew. Haruka never took her to the same park twice, unless she was particularly wound up, and then she was greeted at home with stern whispers. Grocery stores were on a specific rotation. Hotaru got to go where she’d been before sometimes, but only with a different mother. She was encouraged not to talk to other children. They couldn’t stop her from observing. So she saw—there was a little girl who passed by the front yard every Saturday morning in her stroller. The little girl looked the same every week. The boys who shoved their parents’ quarters into the kiddie ride horse outside the grocery stores looked the same, too. Hotaru did not look the same. She grew every few days, pajama pants getting too short overnight. She saw children she’d resembled just days before struggle with tasks she could now do easily. Hotaru twirled a pen in her hand. She wanted to do something with the knowledge she was different.  

But that was where her knowledge ended. She’d asked Haruka first, knowing she was easiest to crack. They’d gone out toy shopping, Haruka promising to buy Hotaru anything she wanted.

“How about this?” she’s asked, pulling out an extravagant Play-Doh set in vibrant neon colors.

“It doesn’t look like much fun.” Hotaru took a breath. “Papa, should I find that more interesting than I do?”

“Of course not, sweetheart, you can like whatever you like.” Haruka picked her up, struggling some as Hotaru was too lanky to fit against her hip as she once had. “You don’t let anyone tell you what you like is wrong, whether it’s girl things or boy things or little kid things or adult th—well, not too adult now, but we can get you video games if you like, or—“

There was no one besides her mothers to tell Hotaru anything. Expressing that, though, would be a pointless diversion. “That’s not what I mean. A week ago, I might have liked that. This would have been the right aisle to take me to.” Another parent and child wheeled their cart into the aisle. The child bounced between shelves while their father looked on with resignation.

“I looked like that recently,” Hotaru whispered.

Haruka gave a wry chuckle. “You’ve never been that excited, sweetheart.”

“You’re missing the point!” Hotaru balled her fist and stomped her foot. “I was that size, and most kids stay that size awhile. Why don’t I?”

Haruka’s eyes went wide. She looked from Hotaru to the other family and back again. “Uh. Well. Um. Ah. Kids grow at different paces, I always grew faster than my moth—we shouldn’t talk about this here.” Haruka took her hand and led her out to the parking lot. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Hotaru. Don’t let anyone make you think there is.”

Hotaru had never felt such rage. How could Haruka-papa miss the point so badly?  How could she not see Hotaru’s problem at all. She seethed in silence all the way home.

Setsuna had fared no better.

“People age differently. I have been the same for longer than anyone, and I know a little girl who did not grow for a very long time, and then grew several years’ worth all at once.”

“But is that _normal_?”

“Who’s to say what’s normal, little one? We’re all different. That’s the beauty of life.”

“Some people are much less different.”

“That may be true.”

Setsuna-mama prided herself on knowledge, and on sharing that knowledge, but she would not share what Hotaru wanted.

“Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

Setsuna had the decency to look remorseful. “You will find out in time. We love you, Hotaru, and part of loving someone in protecting them.”

It was a true statement and a false one, and Hotaru wanted to rail against it but the dark suspicion that it was she herself that she was being protect from ate her into acceptance.

It was precisely why she could not ask Michiru. If there was some secret that made Hotaru horrible, Michiru would tell her. No dodging, no sugar coating.

 _Well, Hotaru_ , the Michiru in her head said, hands in her lap and uncaring placid smile on her lips. _The truth is you’re not a child at all. You’re a monster. You’re too dangerous to be alone so we keep you here and suffer._

Hotaru scribbled thick angry lines into the paper on her desk. She could write and draw quite well now, but there was no satisfaction in it. She wanted the truth, she wanted to destroy the lie, or destroy everything, she wanted to tear down the world and make another, a better world, where she was normal and could meet other kids and had a family that loved her in a way she understood, and—

“Do you really want to know?”

Hotaru froze. The voice behind her was familiar yet foreign. It was not from any of her mothers, yet she felt she heard it often.

“You had some of that, once,” the voice said. “Though you were never quite normal.”

Hotaru braced herself and turned around. She saw not a stranger, but herself, older and taller, dressed in a strange sailor suit and holding something resembling a scythe.

“You were me,” the other said. “And we were sick, and we were violated, and we were reborn.” She knelt so they were eye to eye. “You can remember, but the truth can be hard. The happy parts as much as the sad parts.”

“I need to know. I need to know what’s wrong with me.”

The other smiled sadly. “There’s nothing wrong with you. All there is now is you, and me. And I can’t exist unless you let me. You get a choice this time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. If you want to remember, you will. Now, are you sure?”

Hotaru squared her shoulders. “I’m sure.”

The other touched her hand to Hotaru’s forehead. A wall in her mind crumbled and the memories behind it surged forward in a wave. Her father, the accident, the parasite that had grown inside her. The fragility, the fear, the pain, the blossom of hope when she’d met Chibiusa. Her triumph with Saturn. Her rebirth. The decision to rest, to try for a normal life. Her father’s love, confusion, resolve to do better than the things he could no longer quite remember. And—

Hotaru’s eyes shot open. She stood in her room alone. Her pants were too short again, her sweater too snug, but this was no time to bother adjusting to her new height. She stormed out of her room to find Setsuna in the kitchen.

“You stole me.”

Setsuna stopped, dishrag in hand. “Hotaru—“

“You tried to kill me and then you stole me.”

Their eyes met. Setsuna was brave enough to not look away.

“I have only done what was necessary for the circumstances.”

“You said you loved me.”

“And I do.” Setsuna dropped her dish into the water and faced Hotaru properly. “We were made for the good of the world, not ourselves. As Saturn, you know that.”

“You want me to be Saturn, but I get to choose. It’s _my_ choice, even if you try to take it away.”

“I know what you will choose. That is why I took you.”

Hotaru wanted to hit her, to scream, to become Saturn then and there and destroy the world. Worse still, she wanted these things because Setsuna was not wrong. Pluto was not wrong. Pluto did do what she saw to be right in the time stream, and how could Hotaru argue even as she hurt? She turned to leave the kitchen, and there was Haruka.

“I know what you did.”

Haruka froze, fear settling in behind her eyes.

“I will not give you absolution. You will not find it in me.”

“Hotaru, please—“

“How can you ask anything of me?” Hotaru did scream, now. Haruka was wrong, Haruka was human, Haruka had no right to understand her so little. “You would have killed me, and nothing you do will erase that. _Nothing_.”

“Hotaru, sweetheart, I—“

“Don’t call me that!”

“That’s enough.” Michiru came up behind Haruka, the terrifying picture of calm Hotaru knew she would be. “You can be angry, you can be hurt. We did what we had to, and so did you.”

“I want my real family.”

“Then go.”

“Michiru!”

She held a hand to silence Haruka’s protest. “You may go, if you’d like to explain all this to your father. If not, we will continue to provide for you.”

“I…” Hotaru thought of her father, barely recovered from all that had happened. He knew her now as a baby. Would he recognize her? Would she make him remember all mercy had let him forget? “I hate you!” She ran to her room, ignoring Haruka’s sobs behind her.


End file.
